I've been (mostly) a lurker on and off here since 2012, and I have a question I am not sure where to ask so I hope this is the right place. If not, please let me know and I will do my best to avoid the mistake in the future.

I had heard years ago that Square/Eidos had lost the 3D pre-rendered backgrounds of FFVII (complete with all the mode-7 beauty), which caused them to have to recreate every background with sprites for the PC port. So my first question is...is this true? I am going to replay FFVII, and I really loved the style of backgrounds this game has. It's a game changer for me. I've played the PC version modded and it's great and all, but I don't want to sacrifice those backgrounds for more features and better character models. However, I want to be sure they're really missing. Sometimes it seems like they are, sometimes not so much. I want to make sure I didn't just hear wrong and I'm thinking things are looking different because of it (when they are not).

My second question is does VIII and IX suffer from the same problem (assuming it's true)? What I saw of FFIX on steam, it seemed like it was the same backgrounds. I can't really speak of VIII, as I have not played it on PC at all.

If someone more knowledgeable than I could shed some light on this for me, I'd greatly appreciate it. Thank you.

This is an old topic, so I'm going to go against my common sense and respond here.

Not so much for OP's sake, as this appears to be the last post by OP in quite some time, but for anyone else who may have the same ideas.

Square did indeed lose all the 3D Pre-rendered backgrounds (and their original scenes) from FF7 (FF7 did not use Mode 7), however it wasn't 'lost' as in misplaced, they simply deleted them all when moving onto the next project, perhaps not all at the time, but most at least. The Pc version just uses the PSX assets for everything in the game, with some things looking better or worse due to PC monitors having better resolutions, such as the PC sprites having mouths.

VIII and IX did also suffer from this same fate yes. Work was largely deleted, I assume this was due to lack of storage at the time, or just lack of foreplanning.

IX was also made by freelancers largely, and square is particular about who gets to see data from them and who doesn't get to see it.

I'm unsure what this means though

"which caused them to have to recreate every background with sprites for the PC port"

They were textures in the PC version, just like the PSX version, not sprites at all, I'm unsure quite what this means.

Where/how did you learn Square deleted the original 3D files for VII-IX, though? I thought it was a rumor.

I first heard about it when I'm unsure if its Maki, or Halkun, someone from this forum that wrote a big thing about porting of the assets from PSX to PC, though this was specifically relating to FFVII.

Don't quote me on this because I don't remember where I read it, but I remember reading years and years ago when people were asking for a FFVII remake and Square was still shooting that idea down like nobody's business, the original dev team was mildly insulted by these requests. Allegedly they felt it was disrespectful to all the sweat, blood, and tears they'd put into the original game and that it suggested it wasn't good enough.

I wonder if that factors heavily into the whole "didn't expect to ever remake them".